Why I Travel (and Why One Day Is Sometimes Enough)

I didn’t start traveling because I was trying to escape my life or “find myself.” I started traveling because I’ve always been a travel nerd. Long before I ever boarded a plane or stepped onto a ship, the world lived on the map above my bed — in atlases, history books, and stories about places I couldn’t stop thinking about. This is the story of why travel has always mattered to me, and how turning places I’d only read about into real experiences shaped the way I travel — and plan travel — today. 

I had a world map on the wall above my bed when I was a kid. And I mean right above my bed. I would stand there for hours tracing places with my finger — places I was reading about in books and encyclopedias — just staring at the map and imagining what it would be like to actually be there. I was that kid at the library trying to check out atlases and reference books… and being told I couldn’t, because “those don’t circulate.” (Which felt deeply unfair, by the way.) 

So I’d just sit there instead, flipping pages, memorizing things, connecting dots. I followed Greek soldiers and Alexander the Great across maps. I watched empires expand and collapse on paper long before I ever set foot outside the U.S. History wasn’t abstract to me — it was geographic. It lived on maps.

 That nerdiness spilled into movies too. The Sound of Music was my absolute favorite as a kid. I didn’t just love the songs — I loved the setting. The mountains. The city. The idea of place. And years later, I finally got to go there and see it with my own eyes, standing in spots I’d only known from a screen and my imagination. At some point, all that reading and dreaming turned into urgency. Life got busy. Loud. Full. I was working hard, taking care of everyone else, doing all the responsible adult things — and I realized that if I didn’t start going now, I might spend my whole life reading about places instead of actually standing in them. 

 So I went. Not perfectly. Not slowly. Sometimes not comfortably. Sometimes that meant chaos. Sometimes that meant a whirlwind. Sometimes that meant one very full day in Rome, walking forever, surrounded by crowds, seeing ancient things I’d followed across maps years earlier — and being completely okay with the fact that it wasn’t serene or cinematic. Because here’s the thing: Sometimes it’s okay if travel is a little chaotic. Sometimes it’s okay if you only have one day. Sometimes showing up matters more than doing it “the right way.” (If you read my Cruise Port posts in my Facebook Group, you already know this about me.) 

 Travel wasn’t fixing anything for me — it was feeding something. That part of my brain that lights up when a place stops being a dot on a map and starts being real. When something you’ve read about your whole life suddenly has weight and sound and scale. And over time, I realized that’s what I love helping other people do too. Not chase perfection. Not wait for the “ideal” amount of time or circumstances. But to thoughtfully, intentionally, actually go — even if it’s busy, even if it’s fast, even if it’s not how Instagram would script it. Because seeing places you’ve been reading about your whole life changes you in a quiet, lasting way. And honestly? I don’t think you ever regret going — you only regret not going sooner.

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